The Spanish government has a plan to prevent kids from watching porn online: Meet the porn passport. Officially (and drily) called the Digital Wallet Beta (Cartera Digital Beta), the app Madrid unveiled on Monday would allow internet platforms to check whether a prospective smut-watcher is over 18. Porn-viewers will be asked to use the app Read more about Spain introduces porn passport – really wants to know what you are watching and especially how often erm… no… *cough* to stop kids from watching smut[…]

Techdirt has been covering the disgraceful attempts by the EU to break end-to-end encryption — supposedly in order to “protect the children” — for two years now. An important vote that could have seen EU nations back the proposal was due to take place recently. The vote was cancelled — not because politicians finally came Read more about EU’s ‘Going Dark’ Expert Group Publishes 42-Point Surveillance Plan For Access To All Devices And Data At All Times[…]

Microsoft has made OneDrive slightly more annoying for Windows 11 users. Quietly and without any announcement, the company changed Windows 11’s initial setup so that it could turn on the automatic folder backup without asking for it. Now, those setting up a new Windows computer the way Microsoft wants them to (in other words, connected Read more about Windows 11 is now automatically enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission[…]

Automated license plate readers “pose risks to public safety,” argues the EFF, “that may outweigh the crimes they are attempting to address in the first place.” When law enforcement uses automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to document the comings and goings of every driver on the road, regardless of a nexus to a crime, it Read more about EFF: New License Plate Reader Vulnerabilties Prove The Tech Itself is a Public Safety Threat[…]

European Union officials have delayed talks over proposed legislation that could lead to messaging services having to scan photos and links to detect possible child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Were the proposal to become law, it may require the likes of WhatsApp, Messenger and Signal to scan all images that users upload — which would Read more about EU delays decision over continuous spying on all your devices *cough* scanning encrypted messages for kiddie porn[…]

On Thursday, the EU Council is scheduled to vote on a legislative proposal that would attempt to protect children online by disallowing confidential communication. The vote had been set for Wednesday but got pushed back [PDF]. Known to detractors as Chat Control, the proposal seeks to prevent the online dissemination of child sexual abuse material Read more about Signal, MEPs urge EU Council to drop law that puts a spy on everyone’s devices[…]

It’s been a rocky couple of months for Sonos — so much so that CEO Patrick Spence now has a canned autoreply for customers emailing him to vent about the redesigned app. But as the company works to right the ship, restore trust, and get the new Sonos Ace headphones off to a strong start, Read more about Sonos draws more customer anger — this time for its privacy policy. Now they will sell your customer data, apparently[…]

The Federal Communications Commission has slapped the largest mobile carriers in the US with a collective fine worth $200 million for selling access to their customers’ location information without consent. AT&T was ordered to pay $57 million, while Verizon has to pay $47 million. Meanwhile, Sprint and T-Mobile are facing a penalty with a total Read more about FCC fines America’s largest wireless carriers $200 million for selling customer location data without permission[…]

Nintendo sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice for over 8,000 GitHub repositories hosting code from the Yuzu Switch emulator, which the Zelda maker previously described as enabling “piracy at a colossal scale.” The sweeping takedown comes two months after Yuzu’s creators quickly settled a lawsuit with Nintendo and its notoriously trigger-happy legal team Read more about Helldivers 2 PC players suddenly have to link to a PSN account and they’re not being chill about it[…]

Last month the New York Times’ Kashmir Hill published a major story on how GM collects driver behavior data then sells access (through LexisNexis) to insurance companies, which will then jack up your rates. The absolute bare minimum you could could expect from the auto industry here is that they’re doing this in a way that’s clear to car Read more about People Are Slowly Realizing Their Auto Insurance Rates Are Skyrocketing Because Their Car Is Covertly Spying On Them[…]

In a 2023 complaint, the FTC accused the doorbell camera and home security provider of allowing its employees and contractors to access customers’ private videos. Ring allegedly used such footage to train algorithms without consent, among other purposes. Ring was also charged with failing to implement key security protections, which enabled hackers to take control Read more about Ring Spy Doorbell customers get measly $5.6 million in refunds in privacy settlement[…]

 In this cross-sectional analysis of a nationally representative sample of 100 nonfederal acute care hospitals, 96.0% of hospital websites transmitted user information to third parties, whereas 71.0% of websites included a publicly accessible privacy policy. Of 71 privacy policies, 40 (56.3%) disclosed specific third-party companies receiving user information. […] Of 100 hospital websites, 96 […] Read more about US Hospital Websites Almost All Give your Data to 3rd parties, but Many just don’t tell you about it[…]

In hopes of settling a lawsuit challenging its data collection practices, Google has agreed to destroy web browsing data it collected from users browsing in Chrome’s private modes – which weren’t as private as you might have thought. The lawsuit [PDF], filed in June, 2020, on behalf of plaintiffs Chasom Brown, Maria Nguyen, and William Read more about Google will delete data collected from private browsing[…]